Safari Zone Liverpool @ Home edition lies behind us, so why don’t we take a look back? Since we are allowed out for a walk, I tried to maximize my walking during the event hours. I had the luck that the weather was ok to be out, but not amazing, so the area where I played was abandoned apart from some joggers every now and then. In this article, I will go over all the aspects of the Safari Zone event, and break down a few important topics. Was the event a success, could some things be better. Let’s find out together. Enjoy!
SZL FEATURED POKÉMON
I’n the toggle below, you can find an overview of all featured Pokémon for SZL.
| SAFARI ZONE SPAWNS | ||
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
| Krabby* | Chinchou* | Relicanth |
 |  |  |
| Dratini* | Oshawott | Liverpool |
 |  |  |
| Horsea* | Lileep* | Wailmer* |
 |  |  |
| Red-Striped Basculin | Dwebble | Mudkip* |
 | ||
| Wingull* | ||
 | ||
| Pikachu (Safari Hat)* | ||
For me, the featured Pokémon were ok. I liked how they chose for the Water-type theme for Liverpool, it being a city at the water side. All spawns made sense to me, a few of course a bit more exciting than the others. I still needed a lot of the Shiny variants of the featured Pokémon, so this was an excellent opportunity for me.
Unown are always cool. I still needed some letters appearing in Liverpool, so I was happy with the choice of Unown spawning. Apart from that, being a PvP enthusiast made stocking up on Chinchou and candy one of my main priorities, as well as to obtain a good IV spread. This same reason made me very happy with Relicanth as the regional. I already traded for one, but now I got my hands on some very good IV spreads, as well as a lot of Relicanth to trade to my friends who still need one.
Further, I’m not going to discuss each featured Pokémon. In general, they made good choices, and they all made sense to me. Good job!
SAFARI ZONE SPAWNS
To analyze the Safari Zone further, let’s take a look at how the spawns were. There are a few aspects we’re going to discuss:
- General Spawns Rates
- Incense Spawn Rates
- Spawn Diversity
- Shiny Rates
- Egg Pools
General Spawn Rates
When the event started, it looked like Niantic decided to turn on every single existing spawn point. For a few months, I regularly have about 3 spawns around my house at a reachable distance. When the SZ started, I saw 6 spawns outside of my Incense.
When walking around, spawns were literally everywhere. Even without an Incense, I would’ve been able to continuously catch Pokémon. Long story short: general spawn rates were AWESOME. There wasn’t a moment I couldn’t catch something, and since my main goal was to catch as much as I could, this was a very big deal for me.
Incense Spawn Rates
Of course, I understand that not everyone was able or allowed to go outside. For this, Niantic made some necessary adjustments. Incense started after 10 pm on your play day lasted for 8 hours, the duration of the event.
Apart from this, spawn rates (that were already pretty good in the adjusted 1-hour Incense) were increased to about 1 spawn every 30 seconds. That means that you could get almost 1000 spawns out of one Incense, out of the comfort of your own home. One word: AMAZING. Great move by Niantic!
Spawn Diversity
With a relatively large list of featured Pokémon, one could fear that certain Pokémon get pushed to the background and would be harder to find. Fortunately, this was not the case. Spawns were balanced well, and there wasn’t a Pokémon specie that seemed to hard to find.
If I had to give one point of critique, I’d say that Chinchou spawns were a bit much. On the other hand, Chinchou was the #1 featured Pokémon with its Shiny release, so it’s not a surprise it was spawning like crazy. Also, Lanturn is a great addition to your Great League team, so hoarding some candy and finding a good IV spread was definitely not that hard.
Shiny Rates
What can I say? Shiny rates were nothing more or less than RIDICULOUS, and I mean that in a good way. The amount of spawns were outrageous, and with that came that Shiny rates were as well.
I myself caught around 2000 Pokémon during my SZ, and ended up with no less than 37 Shinies. To compare: that’s almost three times the amount I got at GO Fest Dortmund 2019. I caught more Pokémon now, but still, that’s insane.
Niantic did a great move by making Shiny rates this high so that people playing from home could still have a good chance of encountering a lot of Shiny Pokémon. I hope they take this in mind for future events!
Egg Pools
For the duration of the event, 2km Eggs were obtainable from PokeStops. As if all of this wasn’t enough, Egg pools were amazing as well. Rare hatches like Darumaka, Axew, and more made this event even more fun to play for people who were able and allowed to go out. The Eggs gave a cool extra touch to the experience and made the City Explorer Pass gain a bit of its value back. More about that later.
SAFARI ZONE RESEARCH
The Special Research available during the event was altered as well to be playable from home. Rewards were cool, as it provided you with a whopping 300 Great Balls, and some cool premium Items like Golden Razz Berries, a Star Piece, and an Incense. You can find all rewards again in this article.
Also, who doesn’t like getting 20,000 Stardust for free?
CITY EXPLORER PASS
The City Explorer Pass was supposed to provide some nice bonuses during the whole Safari Zone weekend. From 1 hour Incense to special Raids and reduced Egg distance, it had it all to make the Safari Zone weekend a more complete weekend experience. Unfortunately, things turned out a bit different due to current circumstances.
However, the only thing we missed were the exclusive Raids. The Incense bonus was already active, but there was more. From the moment SZL started, CEP holders could enjoy reduced Egg distance, which stacked up on the already active reduction and thus resulted in 1/4 Egg distance for the entire weekend. This made Egg-hatching absolutely INSANE. With event-exclusive 2km Eggs during the SZ window, Eggs got burned in no time.
Bummer we didn’t get the full experience, but definitely a good and welcomed move by Niantic to still keep the CEP experience alive.
LAZY LIVERPOOL
Whether you played from home or were able to play your SZL (partly) outside, this event was truly amazing. It can’t completely replace the actual Safari Zone of course. I really missed the cultural aspect and most of all the social aspect of the event. However, Niantic came up with a great solution and I think they pulled it off almost perfectly.
Big thank you to everyone at Niantic for constantly working to keep this game as enjoyable as possible, now even more than ever. This truly shows the care they have for their community, which warms my heart.
I hope everyone had the same amazing experience as I did, and I hope we can all have more like and even better experiences than this in the future. Stay safe, stay responsible, and take care of yourself and everyone around you.
Steverzwijn
Steven // 22 years young // Belgian // PoGO Lover // Soccer Player // Social Work Student // Favorite expression: "If our cat was a cow, we could milk it at the stove."